Wednesday, 7 August 2013

Organ donation: The most spiritual gift you can give

The
Ultimate Proof Of Humanitarian Love

Some of us are familiar with organ
donation while others have never heard of it. Organ donation relates to the
removal of our body parts (which remain good for some hours after our death)
immediately after our death on the basis of our prior consent, so as to provide
a vital organ to another. Can there be greater humanitarian love - where you
literally give up your body to benefit a person you never even met?

A
Wealth That Grows When You Give it Away

Just as the holy scriptures advice us to
have a more philosophical view of life by acknowledging that we can't take our
wealth with us when we die, our organs too are no good for us the moment we
die. But for another human being, who is struggling to live life because of a
faulty organ, our organ means the difference between life and death. For the
person who receives our organ, it means a second chance at life. Imagine, after
our death, we have the ability to give a bigger gift than we ever could when we
were alive.

Recycling
Life

The gift of an organ enables a blind
person to see, the gift of a tissue enables a patient of Parkinson's to recover
their mobility, and so on. The organs which can be donated after one's death
are the heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, lungs, pancreas, besides tissues
like the cornea, heart valves, skin and bones.

The
Stats

In India, each year, for lack of vital
organs: Five lakh people die; two lakh people die of liver disease; 50,000
people die of heart disease; 150,000 people await a kidney transplant but only
5,000 get one; one crore people suffer from corneal blindness and await
transplant. The bigger the tree of need, the more each leaf counts...

Donations
By The Dead And The Living

Besides organ donations after death,
many living people donate an organ, like a kidney, to help save another. The
organs or tissues are removed in a surgical procedure (following a medical
determination on its suitability for transplantation) known as
allotransplantation.

We All
Have Something To Give

Even if we are ill, or old, we all have
the gift of life to give another. Name it the ultimate spiritual gift. The
donor group, of course, does not include those with active cancer, active HIV,
active infection or intravenous drug use.

About Me

Sacred Scripture, the revered texts, or Holy
Writ, of the world’s religions. Scriptures comprise a large part of the
literature of the world. They vary greatly in form, volume, age, and degree of
sacredness; but their common attribute is that their words are regarded by the devout as
sacred. Sacred words differ from ordinary words in that they are believed
either to possess and convey spiritual and magical powers or to be the means
through which a divine being or other sacred reality is revealed in phrases and
sentences full of power and truth.Most sacred scriptures were originally oral and were
passed down through memorization from generation to generation until they were
finally committed to writing. A few are still preserved orally, such as the
hymns of the American Indians (now being recorded by anthropologists). Many
bear the unmistakable marks of their oral origin and can best be understood
when recited aloud; in fact, it is still held by many Hindus and Buddhists that
their scriptures lack, when read silently, the meaning and significance they
have when recited aloud, for the human voice is believed to add to the recited
texts dimensions of truth and power not readily grasped by the solitary reader.

Not all scriptures, however, were originally oral, nor were
they in all parts directly effectual in rituals that sought the granting of
magical and spiritual powers. The greater part of recorded scripture has either
a narrative or an expository character. The types of sacred and semisacred
texts are, in fact, many and varied. Besides magical runes (ancient Germanic
alphabet characters) and spells from primitive and ancient sources, they
include hymns, prayers, chants, myths, stories about gods and heroes, epics,
fables, sacred laws, directions for the conduct of rituals, the original
teachings of major religious figures, expositions of these teachings, moral
anecdotes, dialogues of seers and sages, and philosophical discussions. In
fact, scriptures include every form of literature capable of expressing religious
feeling or conviction.